What strategies should the Alliance have used against the Horde under Garrosh and Syl

[Terrorthatflapsinthenight]

What real strategy or strategies should the Alliance have devised and put in action against the Horde during the Alliance-Horde War, and during the Fourth (in truth Fith) War ?

By real strategy I mean a real plan with a medium or long-term objective, and with realistic means and stages in the plan to fight and win the war, rather than what we saw or didn't see during Cataclysm and MoP and all the nonsense shown in BFA and its novelizations.

It means devicing a plan, having clear objectives, use well the ressources at the Alliance's disposal, insure the supply and logistical means, and do actions while not overreaching.

[BaumanKing]

Using gas masks for a start.

[Nerovar]

Use spaceship and lightforged battlesuits capable of destroying spaceships.

[Varodoc]

Utilize the Ren'dorei more, as the Ren'dorei possess instant teleportation capabilities (for example, they were able to instantly teleport an Alliance army from X to Lordaeron).

Have a group of Ren'dorei under Magister Umbric sneak into the Sunwell, corrupt it, and bring doom upon the last bastion of Horde power in the East.

Have another group of Ren'dorei under Alleria Windrunner sneak into Orgrimmar and wreck as much shit as possible, perhaps by bringing Gnomish squads with them to blow things up.

This is all in a vacuum of course, i.e. ignoring the fact that the Alliance are the objectively Good faction, and thus wouldn't resort to such tactics. Even though the Ren'dorei by themselves could have indeed won the war, if they intended to exterminate their enemies.

[Myradin]

There's a lot they could do but the alliance never leverage their assets.

Its what's so weird about the alliance, is blizz keeps giving them powerful stuff, them not losing it (unlike the horde when X inevitably turns evil), and then just likes to forget it exists.

They also don't leverage typically neutral organizations that might also have an issue with the horde's work. I get they're neutral, but replagueing eastern lordaeron and destroying ashenvale aint exactly good for the neutral druid or paladin organizations either.

[Val the Moofia Boss]

The Alliance has aerial superiority. If the faction war was actually allowed to play out no holds barred then every Horde "city" gets firebombed and the war ends overnight.

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The Horde and the Alliance are in no way comparable. Up until the addition of Zandalar and Suramar, the Horde was made up of small refugee populations of hunter-gatherers. Every single Horde race was merely a small fraction of a former nation. Most Alliance nations have not been decimated. Ruined during the First and Second Wars, but not decimated (otherwise the internment of the Orcs would have been impossible). The Alliance also has several nations that were never ruined in the first place (the Dwarf Kingdoms, etc). Furthermore, all Alliance races are agricultural. The Alliance also has logistics capabilities that the Horde simply does not have, with advanced networks of roads and trams and mercantile fleets and airships. The end result means that the Alliance has straight up several times the population of the Horde, and can actually support extensive campaigns and huge armies in a way that nomadic hunter gatherers cannot.

The Alliance also has a tremendous technological advantage over the Alliance. The Alliance has sniper rifles, rayguns, machineguns, gas, nuclear weapons (remember Gnomergan was rendered uninhabitable by a dirty bomb), airships, shield generators, spaceships, and death star cannons (remember the Vindicaar drilling into Antorus?). The Alliance has literally no reason to try to stupidly fight Orcs in melee combat when they can just wipe them out in relative safety from afar.

If the war was realistic, then there wouldn't be a war. Suramar and Zandalar would renounce their loyalty to the Horde, unwilling to be ruined in a fruitless struggle for some lowly beastmen they never should have joined in the first place and who never helped them. Silvermoon as well, since they literally never got anything out of being Horde. All three are physically cut off from the rest of their allies by an ocean and have no hope of aiding each other as the Alliance would sink any of their ships. The rest of the rabble would get their cities torched and their survivors sent scurrying around their continents barely able to feed themselves and fighting among themselves while the Alliance goes home.

[Feanoro]

Actually using their advantages instead of forgetting them in favor of melee weapons.

There's no real way to answer this, as every Alliance advantage including and especially the powerful characters is instantly disabled or forgotten because "that's not the story we want to tell".

[Zuben]

More deus ex machinas. Worked wonders in Lordaeron and Darkshore. Had Saurfang's gambit failed at Orgrimmar's gates they would have needed something to bail them out.

Hell, I have to at least commend how they went about Dazar'Alor, as the destruction of its navy was a well-prepared execution, then they even managed to lure Horde forces out of the city with a decoy force.

[Terrorthatflapsinthenight]

There's a lot they could do but the alliance never leverage their assets.

Its what's so weird about the alliance, is blizz keeps giving them powerful stuff, them not losing it (unlike the horde when X inevitably turns evil), and then just likes to forget it exists.

They also don't leverage typically neutral organizations that might also have an issue with the horde's work. I get they're neutral, but replagueing eastern lordaeron and destroying ashenvale aint exactly good for the neutral druid or paladin organizations either.

Well let's imagine that the Alliance is free to use its best assets and weapons, and to try to influence the Argent Dawn and other neutral organisations at its advantage this time.

[Eggroll]

All they would have needed for the Fourth War to end instantly would have been for the Army of the Light to activate the Vindicaar and the Draenei next door not be passive bystanders - which never made sense at any point.

Also: Jaina deus ex machina an entire ship to the Undercity but not to Teldrassil. Yeah, right. The devs just wanted to mass murder night elves so desperately.

[confety]

It has been said multiple times ingame, there is not a positive outcome in trying to fully dismantle the other faction because there is magic in this world, and it would only make the other faction seek vengeance and cause a way worse outcome that what we got.

But "insert faction here" has this weapon!

It doesnt matter because you could say: but this other faction could do this with a mage/warlock and kill thousands of civilians.

Would you risk trying to dismantle the horde/alliance and be bombarded by a rain of infernals or a mana bomb teleported to your capital main square?

There is a reason why in real life nobody uses nuclear weapons against each other, because whoever attacks first will be retaliated with similar force and also die.

[Gelannerai]

Honestly it’s a pointless discussion aside from shits and gigs. As others have said, any military advantage the Alliance has is instantly forgotten about in the span of an expansion (sometimes less than that) in favor of swords and boards. Hilariously, even there the Alliance military is downplayed for dramatic purposes (uh oh we’re running low on troops because we’ve decided population numbers matter for this 2 minute-long cinematic even though they’ve NEVER mattered before, woe is us). The Alliance’s best strategy as this point would be to somehow break the 4th Wall and make Blizzard hire writers who aren’t complete hacks.

[Eggroll]

It has been said multiple times ingame, there is not a positive outcome in trying to fully dismantle the other faction because there is magic in this world, and it would only make the other faction seek vengeance and cause a way worse outcome that what we got.

But "insert faction here" has this weapon!

It doesnt matter because you could say: but this other faction could do this with a mage/warlock and kill thousands of civilians.

Would you risk trying to dismantle the horde/alliance and be bombarded by a rain of infernals or a mana bomb teleported to your capital main square?

There is a reason why in real life nobody uses nuclear weapons against each other, because whoever attacks first will be retaliated with similar force and also die.

It's not about dismantling the other faction. It's about the Alliance being the poor piggy despite superior army and weapons. Hiroshima and Nagasaki were never retaliated and the Horde doesn't have anything that could equal the Alliance forces and technology.

[Thage]

Air-to-surface bombardment with the Vindicaar and gnomish gunships, specifically targeting military high command in Orgrimmar, and gnomish sabotage teams sent into the Undercity to damage Blight production in such a way that attempting its use would wipe out the surrounding Forsaken due to critical system failure. Decapitating strikes and crippling Sylvanas's primary weapon takes most of the teeth out of the Horde, and talks for folding the Horde into the Alliance can begin. It's telling that Blizzard had to explicitly confirm an out-of-universe motive for why the Vindicaar and Ancients were nowhere to be seen during the War of Thorns, using the phrase "That's not the story we want to tell" instead of offering an in-universe explanation for why one of the Alliance's biggest guns was a total no-show despite proximity while Teldrassil was marched on.

[Narwhalosh Whalescream]

My bet would be to lure out the horde on the open fields of somewhere... Like Tirisfal, and then use dwarven tanks and gnomish mecha cavalry as mobile infantry in 2 big blobs to execute a big cool pincer attack then attack inwards, capture them and their arms, destroy lines of communication. Do it a few times and by that point their frontline should be weak enough for you to do it at a smaller local scale to take out the rest in small pockets that are unable to do very much. Combine that pincer attack with some artillery that the alliance has lots of and some air to ground aircraft like those gnomish helicopters with machine guns and rockets.
Of course every soldier should be issued with a gas mask.

If horde stays inside the castle there just bring the vindicaar and let the light sort em out, which is a bit boring.

[Feanoro]

Well let's imagine that the Alliance is free to use its best assets and weapons

Then the Horde loses in about five minutes.

[mickybrighteyes]

Use spaceship and lightforged battlesuits capable of destroying spaceships.

I loved how inconsistent those suits were. sometimes they destroyed whole ass ships... other times they struggled against packs of animals little worse than wolves.

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This is all in a vacuum of course, i.e. ignoring the fact that the Alliance are the objectively Good faction, and thus wouldn't resort to such tactics. Even though the Ren'dorei by themselves could have indeed won the war, if they intended to exterminate their enemies.

MFW I remember Varian sneaking into Ironforge to exterminate Moira Bronzebeard.....


more like vacuum where you ignore that rendorei are corrupted beings of void walking the line to maintain their sanity

[The Stormbringer]

Use spaceship and lightforged battlesuits capable of destroying spaceships.

Yeah, this. Supposedly the Vindicaar was being used to protect Azuremyst from the Horde, but we never saw any of that reflected in-game. It should've been able to zip on over and blow up all the catapults threatening Teldrassil at the VERY LEAST.

[Terrorthatflapsinthenight]

Yeah, this. Supposedly the Vindicaar was being used to protect Azuremyst from the Horde, but we never saw any of that reflected in-game. It should've been able to zip on over and blow up all the catapults threatening Teldrassil at the VERY LEAST.

Said catapults shouldn't have even been capable of representing even a very small threat to Teldrassil but well with the current writing team a single troll with a simple torch was able of setting a city on fire without one of the greatest mages of Azeroth being able of lighting the fire out and Sylvanas' forces were capable of getting a corpse from the bottom of the ocean even if this corpse was incenerated and utterly decayed decades ago, so....

[The Stormbringer]

Said catapults shouldn't have even been capable of representing even a very small threat to Teldrassil but well with the current writing team a single troll with a simple torch was able of setting a city on fire without one of the greatest mages of Azeroth being able of lighting the fire out and Sylvanas' forces were capable of getting a corpse from the bottom of the ocean even if this corpse was incenerated and utterly decayed decades ago, so....

I'm not even sure how the hell those catapults REACHED the tree. Like, were they some kinda insane suped-up Goblin-made Azerite-enhanced demolishers? Because the tree is supposed to be like, miles away from shore, let alone why the tree went up like it was made of dry kindling.